“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another,”
William James
One of the reasons Al and I decided to make this change was because we were both suffering with stress. Al from the stress of being a Chef and partner in a business and me from working in a management role in Information Security for an American bank. Our jobs were very stressful and meant that we had different days off and usually only saw each other for about an hour at the end of the day, when we would eat and catch up. We both spent a lot of time trying to ensure the other one was ok and had what they needed to get through, supporting each other during various moments of crisis, such as when I was being bullied by my boss or when Al worked every single day for 3 months. It was hard and we were tired.
I was approaching 42 with a decision to make whether to push myself for a promotion at work that would have meant even more stress or walk away. While we still had a plan to start our own business, we were too tired and strung out to know exactly what the business would look like or where we would base it. We had a lot of ideas, but no concrete plan. It still seemed like a pipe dream, a carrot to get us past all the sticks.
Like many people Al and I always want to be the best at what we do. We work hard and put all our efforts into what we are doing and we both thrive on a certain level of stress. I know that at work being able to stay calm and rational during a stressful incident or situation and being able to pull everything together to get through it successfully is not only something that I was able to do well, but something I actually enjoyed and in professional cookery a busy service is similar, so in many ways we are our own worst enemies. However there comes a level of on-going stress and anxiety, where you do not feel in control of it and do not know if you will be able to get through it, never mind successfully and that is very damaging. At various points we have both had prolonged periods of this kind of stress.
As chronic stress heads and anxious people with a healthy dose of imposter syndrome, we had tried many self-help solutions, with meditation, breathing exercises and Cognitive Behavioural therapy becoming occasional but regular parts of our lives, however we recognised that the only lasting solution was to change our lives. What we decided to do, potentially symptomatic of the people we are, was to quit our jobs, rent out our house and move to another country, with another language and to see how we got on. The idea was to change so much that we could focus on what really mattered to us and what we really wanted.
What became apparent quite quickly is that we found other things to stress about. On the drive through France, we stressed about keeping to our timetable and driving on the other side of the road. When we arrived we stressed about our broken down van. Then Al stressed about not finding a job in the first 3 weeks we were here, we both stressed about our level of Italian. We stressed about not being the best at language school. I stressed about how I would be able to get a job, we stressed (and still stress) about not having an apartment. We stressed about having to move all the time. As each stress was resolved, we found new things stressing us out. At one point I had a panic attack about having periodontitis because I was convinced my gums were receding. We had made real change but we were still stressed!
The truth is, so far as I have observed, that while work and other things can put you under stress and put you in stressful situations, you can also get dependent on the stress. Dependent on the adrenaline flooding through your body when you are managing a difficult situation and then the escalation to panic when you don’t feel in control and don’t know if the outcome will be successful. When you cut off the source, if you do not deal with your own responses to stress, you can start to generate the stress yourself. It’s like your body craves the feeling of the response. You stress about things that would otherwise bounce off you. Your body is like “What happened to all my stress hormones man, I need that shit to function.” You find yourself in a cold sweat because you can’t remember the Italian word for the thing in your dream, which when you really concentrate on it, was not a real thing anyway. You have built yourself for stress. Your systems are optimised for cortisol and then you turned off the tap.
Often children stress about things and we think, ah bless them, they think they are stressed but this is not really a problem. I think this is wrong, the stress is the same, it is relative, but this is our first opportunity to teach them how to deal with it in a healthy way. I do not pretend that I have conquered my stress or that I can point you in the direction of a cure. What I can tell you is that when you take yourself out of a stressful situation you take yourself and your existing response with you. You need to think about how you can manage your stress better so that when you are in genuinely difficult situations you are more resilient and have healthier responses. As I have learned this is not as simple as removing a specific stress stimuli, although this is helpful in the short term, it is about facing your problematic responses and identifying a better way for you to respond.
When you are busy and your body has stepped up its stress response, the temptation is to put your head down and “get through it”. This often means you will not sleep properly because your thought patterns will be in cyclical phase so you constantly obsess about the same worry or comment you made or how you will deal with tomorrow etc. The lack of sleep will mean you are more likely to make mistakes or take something personally or feel like you are not doing a good job. Your brain will reward you by negative thinking about you and your situation. You are going to be found out, you don’t have the skills, you are rubbish because you are tired, you are rubbish because you’re rubbish. You will be sacked, everyone knows you are rubbish, everyone hates you. Why did you think that you would be able to do this etc.? Situations are blown out of all proportion and you are not able to think clearly and logically.
Something which is completely counterintuitive to the “head down, get through it” urge, which I think is natural and culturally persistent, is to breathe and step back. . There is a reason why all the advice is about deep breathing and walking away to get perspective. When I realised that I was essentially having a panic attack about a non-existent problem with my gums, I knew it was about my body’s cold turkey of other stress, but and I can’t emphasise this enough, it did not make any difference to how I felt. The panic was real, the feeling was real. When I looked into the mirror I saw receding gums. I had to find a way to address it that my mind would find acceptable. I tried to be rational about it and I found an English speaking dentist on line, made an appointment and he was indeed able to re-assure me. It seems simple, but it took me weeks of stress to do it, and truth be told Al phoned the dentist for me. This stress/panic cycle was ended, but I knew that it would be replaced by something else if I did not use the time now available to tackle the response to stress which I had spent years building and reinforcing with my behaviours.
Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way sorry about the decisions I have made in relation to this. I haven’t thought, well if I’m going to be stressed I might was well be stressed doing something I know well that pays better. Life is too short to be in a career you hate or working a job that you don’t like, because you are afraid to leave or scared by the uncertainty and insecurity that would bring, but changing it is only the first step. When you leave you have to take you with you, so you need to step back and really identify what the issues are for you, listen to what you need to change and be prepared to take those steps, including ones you could not have imagined when you set out.
However, the realisation that I was stressing partly because I wasn’t being stressed by work, was a revelation. When I voiced this to Al, he agreed. Our bodies were so primed for stress that they were essentially having to generate it. We were able to step back and consider our successes and what we had achieved given the gamble we had taken. Now we make an effort to regularly recap on how well we are progressing and what we have managed to achieve, as well as if there are any learning points we can take away from things that have not gone as well as we would have liked. We actually make time to stop and to discuss this with each other to prevent any build up of negative thinking and self-doubt. We take the time to be grateful about what we have. We stop and ask ourselves why we are getting emotional about things that are beyond our control and ask ourselves if they really matter.
We have started with lower level jobs and still have to remind ourselves that we are not being held responsible for the overall success of our organisations, only the parts we directly impact, but we are learning how to recognise the old responses, to step back from them and find another way. I do Yoga most days which I find really helpful after sitting cooped up at a desk with a stooped back for too many years. I also find the focus on breathing and being present very useful in helping my sub-conscious process things while my conscious mind is busy. Like many people I find meditation useful, but I struggle to fit it in everyday, although I am working on it. Although I am in a less stressful job I am building my resilience so when we are in the situation where we are ready to take on our own business, which will be very stressful, I don’t fall into the old patterns and negative behaviours which have impacted on my health and confidence.
As I said this is only my observation but if it resonates with you, I hope you will find it useful and remember it’s not ok for people or organisations to put you under stress or into stressful situations but to take heart from the knowledge that you can control your response.
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
Epictetus
